12DB, Day 3: Hate

A pretty girl I’ve never met writes to me:

You’re anti-social and hate everything. Me too! At least in a world of loathing, we know there are others with a like mind out there.

This is a tricky situation. On the one hand, I am anti-social and I do hate everything, just as this woman does. And yet I wonder if she hates everything for the same reasons I do. The ass of it is, I only hate everything because I love it so much. I only hate the stupidity of humanity because it represents so much wasted potential. And really, the only stuff worth hating is stuff with free will.

Yeah, I can “hate” things that aren’t sentient. When I get going, I can hate the weather or the moon, but that’s just displacement. Weather is actually awesome. And even the moon—although I yearn, like all men, to destroy it—is OK, really. You can only truly hate something that is in someone’s control. Like public transportation. Or congress. Or a lack of electrical outlets at coffee shops. Or stupidity.

So the hate is more frustration-based. It’s not “Why must things be so awful?” It’s “Things don’t have to be so awful, but they are!” Which is much worse.